Teaching outdoor and adventure activities: an investigation of a primary school physical education professional development p

Participants
 
Qualitative
 
Quantitative
 
Whole School
Principal
Observation and 
field notes
Teachers
Focus group 
interviews
Questionnaires
Children
Focus group 
interviews
Questionnaires
Physical Best Day 
including measures of
height, weight, aerobic 
fitness, muscular 
strength, flexibility and 
endurance
 
Quotations and their coding. 
Due to the number of methods of data collection 
used in this study as well as the various class groupings a coding system was created to 
support references to the data. Focus group interviews with teachers are abbreviated to 
FGT. When reference to a teacher from a particular class is necessary, a name and 
number representing the class the teacher teaches, was added. Similar coding applied to 
children, for example, FGC Boy 5 refers to a children’s focus group interview with a 
response from a fifth class boy and FGT Mary SI a response from a female teacher 
called Mary from Senior Infants. Field notes are represented by the letters FN followed 
by the date on which the note was made. Any reference by the Principal will be referred 
to as ‘IP’ in the text.

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116 
The School 
The study school was a large, suburban, mixed primary school with a number of 
classes at each level. The school was situated in an affluent area, though a number of 
children (1%) came from the Travelling Community. Social classes 1 (professional 
workers) and 2 (managerial and technical) accounted for 59% of the population in the 
school area in contrast to 32.9% for the national population (Ryan, 2009). There were 
28 class teachers and 780 pupils (aged 4 to 14 years) in the first year of the study and 27 
class teachers and 815 pupils during the second year. Each class has approximately 29 
children and was timetabled for 45 minutes physical education each week. With 26 
classes in the school, it was not possible to schedule an hour of physical education for 
each class each week in the general purpose (GP) hall therefore times allocated were 
between 40-50 minutes depending on the class. Physical education lessons took place 
indoors or outdoors, although if the GP hall was in use for other purposes or if 
inclement weather, the lesson was postponed or cancelled. However, if the weather was 
good, teachers kept their class outside for at least 60 minutes and on more than one 
occasion classes were observed remaining outside longer. The duration of physical 
education provision in the research school was not very different from other schools in 
Ireland or internationally (Hardman & Marshall, 2009), but children were not receiving 
the recommended minimum amount (60 minutes a week) outlined in the curriculum.
The school had a broad array of on and off-site physical education facilities.
Within the school grounds there was a small indoor general-purpose hall, two outdoor 
tarmac areas, one of which had two basketball courts marked complete with hoops, and 
a grassy area for use, weather permitting. The outdoor facilities were used for free play, 
at break-times by the children. Off-site facilities available to the school included the 
local parish hall and a large green opposite the school (the church green) which was 
used sometimes during better weather for team training and athletics training. Teachers 
shared the equipment and were responsible for its collection and return to the relevant 
store prior to, and post their lessons.
The school entered many inter-schools competitions each year. These consisted 
of Gaelic Football, Hurling/Camogie, Cricket, Tennis, and Athletics. A number of 
coaches from National Governing Bodies (NGBs) provided additional coaching during 
the school day, supplementing the games programme of the curriculum. These coaches 
offered programmes in Gaelic Football, Basketball and Cricket.

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117 
The professional development environment that existed in the school at this time 
and on-going throughout the PDP was another important contextualisation that needed 
to be understood for this study. The Principal explained: 
Officially we had SESE [social and scientific education including history, 
geography and science] and drama…we had six days last year. Some of them 
organised by outside facilitators. Some of them organised within the school…so 
we’d have had planning days for the subjects. But that would be a very minor